County, City Agree on Ceremony
Four of the five Jasper County Commissioners met in a called meeting last Thursday to approve spending $2,500 on a ground breaking ceremony for Baxter International, which will be locating at Stanton Springs.
Baxter made the announcement in April, amid much excitement from state and local officials. The large medical manufacturing firm will employ 1,500 at the site that is located at the intersection of Newton, Walton and Morgan Counties, off Hwy. 278. Jasper County is the fourth county in the Four County Development Authority that invested in Stanton Springs and will reap some reward.
However, the most of the reward is still several years off, as the company got numerous tax incentives to locate there.
Only three commissioners attended the regular meeting on Monday, July 16, and they did not approve the expenditure. It took three votes to pass a motion, and Commissioner Mary Patrick voted against it.
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On Thursday, Commissioner Carl Pennamon joined Commissioner Patrick, along with Commissioner Jack Bernard and Chairman Alan Cox for the meeting. He was the deciding vote, joining Messrs. Bernard in Cox in voting for the expenditure. Commissioner Patrick again voted against the expenditure.
She said, “For the record, I would like it in the minutes that I oppose spending $2,500 or any amount of money on a ground breaking for a multi-national company making billions of dollars a year, while our citizens are struggling to pay their property taxes and all their household bills. Yet we have their money to spend on a ground breaking ceremony?”
She went on to say, “I think it is wonderful that Baxter is coming,…and we were told at a meeting with state officials and authority members that we would not have to put up any more money.”
Commissioner Patrick began her remarks by saying, “I am glad the BOC (Board of Commissioners) came to their senses and called a special meeting to handle this in the open. If our county attorney actually told you, Mr. Chairman, that you could poll the commissioners by e-mail, go ahead and authorize the money being spent, and then approve it two weeks later at the regular meeting after it had already been done, then I think we need to consider hiring another attorney to give us correct legal advice. This was very erroneous advice, which could have resulted in fines for each individual commissioner for violating open meetings laws.”
Commissioner Patrick was referring to an e-mail she received, as did each commissioner, from Chairman Cox, asking them to vote by e-mail. She called their attention to the fact that voting by e-mail is not legal or binding. Then they called the meeting.
After much discussion, Commissioner Bernard said he agreed with commission Patrick, “we should have had more information. This has not been handled well by the Development Authority of Jasper County (DAJC), but it’s not worth embarrassing the county [by withholding the funding].”
He said he would vote to give them the money, but he hopes it does not continue. He said the DAJC needs to keep us up to speed.
Commissioner Pennamon said we have a commissioner on the Four-County Authority, and the County manager meets with the DAJC, and we need to ask them to bring us any correspondence shared at the meeting.
Commissioner Charles Hill who is on the Four County Authority was not at Thursday’s meeting. County Manager Greg Wood said he would share what he received, but that he is an ad hoc member of the DAJC and is excluded from closed portions of meetings.
The city of Monticello is also contributing $2,500 to the ground breaking ceremony.
